


It'll change your life

by iridescentglow



Category: Making Out - Katherine Applegate
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentglow/pseuds/iridescentglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then they lived happily ever after, blah blah blah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It'll change your life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finkpishnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/gifts).



Nina sat on the fire escape of her Boston apartment, smoking an unlit cigarette.

She sat with her back against the window, her feet lodged against the black metal railings of the fire escape. While one hand held the cigarette to her lips, the fingers of her other hand drummed restlessly against her leg. The apartment was only on the third floor, but it still agitated her fear of heights just slightly. She didn’t spend much time out here. Only when she was stressed did she venture out to retrieve her hidden pack of Lucky Strikes from behind the planter on the fire escape.

Today, she was stressed.

She sucked hard on the cigarette and then exhaled a stream of smokeless air. She’d quit not-smoking a couple of years ago. Around her new friends in South End, she’d begun to feel that maybe it looked like a hipster sort of thing. An affectation. One that aligned her with the bearded guys who smoked pipes that produced bubbles. What her new friends didn’t realize was that her not-smoking habit was not an affectation and it really did soothe her nerves.

Today, she needed to soothe her nerves.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the window. It was a perfect, sunny September day – the type of day where Boston pretended to be California, before the freezing _thwack_ of winter crept in.

Out here on the fire escape, it was noisy. Traffic and shouting and the steady thump of a bassline. She loved the sound of the city after so many years of silence on Chatham Island. She loved the smells, too: they formed a blanket here; gross smells mingling with the fragrant and delicious. Still, as much as she loved Boston, under the layers of exhaust fumes and Mediterranean food, she was quick to isolate the smell of fish from a restaurant down the block. That smell immediately tugged her back to the island that would always be home.

She heard the sound of the front door opening inside the apartment and her eyes flew open. She panicked and threw the cigarette over the side of the fire escape. Then she regretted it immediately, because she needed the not-nicotine fix of not-smoking to stop her feeling of not-stress over things that were not a big deal.

She crawled back into the apartment, half-falling through the window and onto the carpet. It was exactly how a grown-up, sophisticated woman imagined herself greeting her handsome, live-in lover when he returned home from work. Gracelessly, she levered herself up into a standing position and smiled at Benjamin.

“Hey!”

“Hey, honey,” Benjamin said, his greeting balanced between fond and ironical. “What were you doing out on the fire escape?”

“Oh… gardening,” she said wildly. “We should just toss out those plants.” She gestured to the planter, which was filled with herbs (brown, miserable) and weeds (thriving, happy). “They always die. The weeds always murder them.”

Benjamin stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her.

“One day,” he said, “we’ll have a real garden. Tons of herbs. I’ll be able to make you lamb with rosemary, ravioli with squash and sage.”

He dropped a kiss beneath her earlobe and she felt the familiar squirm in the pit of her stomach – a feeling that had somehow not diminished in the last seven years. However, the pleasant, squirmy feeling was joined by a much-less-pleasant, panicked feeling and she pulled away, wriggling out of his embrace.

“How was work?” she asked, her voice overbright.

If Benjamin noticed Nina’s strangeness, he let it pass.

“Gustav pissed off our interviewee,” he said placidly. “Called him a bourgeois whore. The guy’s a carpet salesman. But Gustav thinks it’s all a conspiracy.”

Benjamin raised his eyebrows sardonically and Nina felt her heart flutter. Benjamin was the production assistant to a high-strung documentary director called Gustav. If it were a different day, she would have asked Benjamin to re-enact the entire exchange in great detail. But today, she was too distracted.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“It was… fine. The café was dead, but Suzie let me go early. Came home, watched some TV, made myself some food.”

Like a train gathering speed, she felt her babbling grow faster, more incoherent.

“I bought some really cheap, generic-brand peanut butter,” she continued. “And I was thinking. You know what sentence is the most meaningless in the whole entire English language? It’ll change your life. Because… literally everything changes your life. Every day. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. That peanut butter. It totally changed my life. Not in a good way. But, like, I’ll always have that memory of the weird, gluey texture against my back teeth.” She made a face, feeling herself run out of steam. “Changed my life,” she concluded lamely.

“Okay…” Benjamin gave her his best you’re-a-crazy-person-but-I-love-you smile. “You’ll have to tell me more of your peanut-butter-inspired philosophy this evening. I thought we could go out.”

“Go out where?” she asked suspiciously.

“My buddy just got a waiter job at a fancy new restaurant downtown. He said we can just order starters and he’ll smuggle us over any mains that get sent back to the kitchen. And, trust me, rich people love to send back food. We can even orchestrate some elaborate subterfuge, if you like. We pick whoever’s meal we want to eat. I distract them. You drop a hair in the food. Bingo. They send it back, we eat it. Minus the hair.”

Benjamin grinned expectantly, waiting for Nina to react. Normally, she would have jumped all over a plan like this, suggesting he wear a trench coat and she wear a feather boa. Go full-on spy movie. But, on this occasion, the words ‘fancy restaurant’ were setting off alarm bells.

“Sounds good,” she muttered, wishing she could crawl back out onto the fire escape and not-smoke another cigarette.

“You sure? We can stay home if you want.”

“No… no,” she said.

Benjamin frowned, giving her that look that suggested he was trying to x-ray into her mind. She felt like she really was in a spy movie. He might know that she knew. But she couldn’t let him know that she knew that he might know. _God._ This was exhausting. Adulthood, in general, was exhausting.

Benjamin gave her one last x-ray look and then shrugged.

“…Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna go shower. Wash off the residual self-righteousness that I’m pretty sure Gustav got all over me.”

Nina waited until Benjamin had disappeared into the bathroom and she could hear the sound of the shower running. Then she darted over to the phone and dialled quickly. As she listened to it ring, she kept one eye on the closed bathroom door.

“Hello? Um, I mean. Good afternoon. Zoey Passmore. For all your writing needs.”

“I ate a salad and now everything’s ruined,” Nina said, without preamble. “And, by the way, that greeting makes you sound desperate.”

“I _am_ desperate,” Zoey said with a sigh. “I just wrote ten pages of copy on asphalt.”

“Sticky subject,” Nina said, mock-serious. “Dark. Gritty. Requiring lots of on-the-ground reporting.”

“Ha ha,” Zoey said sourly. “How’s _your_ writing going?”

“I’m not a writer. I make fun of people who are writers. That’s my profession of choice.”

“Come on, Nina. You said you were gonna try and write that thing. About the Martians in South End. It’s funny!”

Nina shifted uncomfortably. Zoey had been nagging her for weeks about turning one of her many dumb story ideas into an actual play. But there was something vaguely tragic about being a waitress with aspirations of being a playwright. Better, surely, to be a waitress with no aspirations whatsoever. That was, at least, realistic. Anyway…

“I didn’t call so you could bug me about my non-existent career,” Nina said.

“Oh, right. You ate a salad. A cataclysmic event. Tell me more.”

“See? That’s why I couldn’t be a writer. You say ‘cataclysmic’. But I just have _ayyyyiiiieeeee_ in my head in block capitals.”

“Salad,” Zoey prompted again.

“Okay.” Nina exhaled a big breath and was silent for a moment, listening to the sound of the running shower. “So I was making myself a snack. PBJ. And I thought… maybe I’ll have salad. It was probably the most grown-up thought I’ve ever had. Like… maybe I’ll do something good for my body. Maybe I’ll chop lettuce and tomatoes and sprinkle little radishes in a bowl. Maybe I’ll make a goddamn vinaigrette.”

“Wow, I’m impressed,” Zoey said, and Nina could hear the mocking smile in her voice.

“Well, guess what? It was a terrible idea. Because I opened the salad crisper and there was a _ring_ inside.”

“Oh my god…”

“I guess Benjamin hid it there, because he thought… where is the last place Nina would ever look? Salad crisper. He could have hidden a severed hand in there and I never would have found out he was a murderer.”

“Oh my _god_ …”

On the other end of the phone, Zoey was crying. Full-on blubbering. Overdramatic bridesmaid at a wedding snivelling-bawling-weeping. Which, come to think of it, was an apt analogy.

“Stop it,” said Nina.

“Oh, Nina…” Zoey sniffled. “We’ll be _family_.”

Nina rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help smiling.

“You’ll be the sister I never had,” Nina said drolly.

Zoey gave a sniffling laugh. “Ah, come on, Nina. You and Claire are close now.”

“Close? Close like a prisoner is close to his jailer. Close like a Thanksgiving turkey is close to its roasting pan.”

Zoey was silent, waiting for the third part of Nina’s comic tautology rule.

“Close like a guy with food poisoning is close to his toilet,” Nina finished.

“Thanks for _that_ metal image. Now tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell! I found the ring, I freaked out. Benjamin came home, he acted like everything was normal. Now I’m calling you.”

“Okay…” Zoey said slowly. “So you act normal, too.”

“ _Act normal_ is the worst advice you have ever given me. Should I tell him I know he’s going to propose?”

“Nooo. You’ll have to act surprised when he asks you. Then call me immediately.”

“I can’t deal with all this acting! I feel like I want to chop off my own hand and put it in the salad crisper. Then see him try to propose to the girl who doesn’t have a ring finger.” She let out an exasperated breath. “I am not this girl. I don’t know how to be this girl. Remember how, when I was little, I thought that weddings were, like, Masquerade Balls? I thought it was just some kind of fancy-dress party. I thought that for _two years_. Weddings are not in my DNA. I’m basically a wedding idiot.”

“…Wait, you are going to say yes, aren’t you?”

The moment Zoey posed her question, Nina was aware of a new silence. A silence that replaced the sound of the shower running.

“ _Ihavetogotalktoyousoon_ ,” Nina muttered and slammed the phone back into its cradle.

Benjamin emerged from the shower, water droplets clinging to his dark hair, towel wrapped around his waist. Handsome, intelligent, hot, sweet, funny Benjamin. How did she ever end up with a guy like him? And how was she going to tell him that, under no circumstances, was she ready to marry him?

Nina opened her mouth, but before she was able to say anything, the phone rang. Nina snatched it from its cradle.

“Oh my god, Zoey, I can’t talk right now,” she muttered, talking out of the side of her mouth, in the hope that Benjamin wouldn’t hear.

“It’s not Zoey,” a cool voice on the other end said. “It’s Claire.”

“Oh,” Nina said, resuming normal speech. “Hi, Claire.”

From the other side of the room, Benjamin nodded, as if to say, _I’ll leave you to it_. He disappeared into the bedroom.

Claire spoke without preamble. “Now that Great Aunt Ella is dead, do you want her ruby ring or her emerald pendant?”

“Jesus, Claire!” Nina exclaimed, caught off guard. “Did you kill Great Aunt Ella? Are you standing over her right now, holding a murder weapon? Are you stripping her body of jewelry?”

“Very droll. Great Aunt Ella died two months ago. Heart attack.”

“She did?”

“Yes, but Pearl Jam was playing the House of Blues that night, so you couldn’t come to the funeral.”

“Oh… Right.” Nina winced. “That does sound like me. But, don’t worry, when you die, I’ll definitely make a special effort.”

“Vice versa,” Claire said, and Nina could imagine her sardonic smile. “Great Aunt Ella said in her will that we could each pick a piece of her jewelry. To remember her by. Although, obviously, you’ll have that bodacious night at Pearl Jam to remember her by.”

“Shut up,” Nina muttered. “What kind of jewelry did she have?”

“The best pieces are an emerald pendant and a ruby ring. Since you’ve never owned a ring that didn’t come from a gum-ball machine, I’m guessing you’ll want the pendant.”

“I don’t know…” Nina said vaguely.

She held up her left hand, twisting an imaginary ring around her finger. Then she looked over in the direction of the bedroom. The door was half-closed and she could hear Benjamin humming along to the radio. Before she could stop to think, Nina heard herself ask, in a low tone:

“You and Paolo ever talk about getting married?”

“Paolo talks. I don’t listen.”

Nina rolled her eyes. She had a sister who was a robot with big buffers and no heart. And a sister-in-law-(maybe-)to-be who was a Meg Ryan rom-com in sentient form. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Neither of them were up to the job of giving decent advice on getting married.

“Has Benjamin proposed?” asked Claire.

“No!” Nina replied.

“Well, if he has, you’d better say yes quick, before the love potion wears off.”

*

If someone were trying to kill you, Nina reasoned, you would outfox them by anticipating every way in which that they might do it.

It was perhaps not rational to apply this same method when someone was planning to propose to you, but Nina was doing it anyway.

On the way to the restaurant, she’d been on the lookout for any signs that might point to an imminent proposal. A skywriter? (It was dark as they walked to the T, so that nixed that one.) A troubadour? (No, the only troubadours in the neighborhood were the usual crowd of drunkards with guitars.) A trio of classical musicians? (Nina scanned the restaurant wildly, but she could see nothing.)

“You want to get a bottle of something?” Benjamin asked when the waiter arrived.

“What, like champagne?” Nina said sharply.

Benjamin shrugged. “If you want.”

“I just want a Coke,” she mumbled.

“Pepsi okay?” asked the waiter.

“Sure, whatever.”

As the waiter walked away, Nina began to regret the decision. Champagne was always a big part of any engagement story. Coke was never a big part of any engagement story. And Pepsi _definitely_ wasn’t a big part of any engagement story.

This was the crux of the matter. She still wasn’t sure whether she wanted to Benjamin to propose or whether she wanted to _stop_ him from proposing. Nina bit her lip. Maybe she should call the waiter back and order champagne. Maybe she should wait, with a simpering smile on her face, for Benjamin to pour the champagne and… oh look! There’s an engagement ring in the glass! And then they lived happily ever after, blah blah blah.

…Oh, god. What if the ring really was in the glass? Zoey had forced her to watch some goofball movie once, where the guy put the ring in the champagne flute. Maybe that was Benjamin’s plan, too.

The waiter returned with a beer for Benjamin and a big glass of Pepsi for Nina. She held up the glass and jostled it surreptitiously, hoping to spy a ring. Looking for a ring in brown-colored liquid was difficult, however. This was why no one ever proposed by dropping a ring in Pepsi. Maybe if she just dipped her hand into it…

Benjamin sat on the other side of the table, calmly sipping his beer and talking about Gustav and the carpet salesman. Nina carefully lowered her glass, so that it was below the line of the table. She stared straight ahead, wearing a poker face, and used her fingers to try and fish the hypothetical-ring out of the Pepsi.

It was at that moment that she spied the trio of classical musicians advancing across the restaurant.

_Ohgodohgodohgodohgod._

Nina pushed back her chair so quickly that she fell over. Her Pepsi made a wide arc as it spilled. The glass dropped from her hand and rolled away across the floor, scattering ice cubes.

Startled, Benjamin stood to help her up. Meanwhile, the trio of musicians stopped at another couple’s table. They began to play Mozart, while a suited man dropped onto one knee and produced a ring. The woman to whom he was proposing covered her mouth with her hands and began to sniffle ostentatiously.

“Little lacking in originality, don’t you think?” Benjamin said in a low voice, as he pulled Nina to her feet.

Nina looked at him hard.

“You know that I know, don’t you?” she asked.

“I know that you know.”

“How could you tell? I’ve been playing it cool.”

“I overheard you talking to Claire on the phone.” He paused to kiss her. “And you have not – my darling, my love, my everything – been playing it cool.”

Nina harrumphed, caught between irritation and gooey-sickly-squirmy levels of love.

“…You’re sure there’s not a ring in my drink?” she asked.

“I’m sure. We really are only here because my buddy told me he could get us free food. I swear. This was just a stop to refuel.” He paused. “Are you ready for our real evening to start?”

Nina took a deep breath.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

Benjamin pulled a silk scarf from his pocket and gently wrapped it around her head, covering her eyes.

*

Nina had an inkling of where they were going. More than an inkling.

How could she have been so stupid as to think that Benjamin would hire a skywriter or drop the ring in a glass of champagne? That didn’t suit Benjamin. And it definitely didn’t suit Nina. Surely, surely, there was only one place he would take her to propose…

They walked arm in arm, Nina blind, Benjamin leading her, through the city streets. And then the milieu changed. They’d headed inside. The air got warmer, stuffier. There was a half-familiar smell, of curry powder and cleaning fluids. She heard a man’s voice say, “Hey, what are you—oh, alright, I guess you can go, but we gotta talk later, buddy—” Benjamin hurried her onward, into a creaking elevator. They rode upwards, to the fourth floor.

They stopped walking and, before he had even taken off her blindfold, she knew with certainty where they were. The Malibu Hotel. Room 428.

As soon as she glimpsed the room number, Nina began to cry. Maybe she was just like that overdramatic woman in the restaurant. Maybe she was just like Zoey. But she couldn’t help it. The emotion welled up inside her, and Benjamin had to practically carry her inside the room.

They took a seat on the end of the bed and Benjamin wiped away her tears. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet ring box. It was the ring box that had, just hours earlier, been nestled between tomatoes and radishes in their salad crisper. Nina stared at it.

“I have a speech planned,” Benjamin said and, to Nina’s amazement, his voice wavered ever so slightly. He was _nervous_ , she realized dizzily.

“You’ll have to tell me if it’s too sincere,” he continued, with a ghost of a smile.

“I lived in the dark a long time. And then I got my sight back. In this room, in fact. And I thought the darkness was over. But I was wrong. I was still in the dark without you. And this room is important not because it’s where I started seeing again. Because it’s where I saw _you_. I’m sorry if this sounds hokey. But you’re the one that taught me it’s okay to be hokey sometimes. Nina. You’re my light. My laughter. My happiness. Will you marry me?”

Benjamin dropped onto one knee and opened the ring box. Inside, there was a tiny baby radish. Nina stared at it.

“I’m going to write a play about Martians!” she exclaimed.

“…Uh, is that a yes?”

“Yes, it’s a yes.”

Benjamin gave her a relieved smile and slipped a hand back into his pocket. He pulled out a ring, its small diamond catching in the light.

“Great. Then I guess you should have this.”

He slipped the ring onto her finger, and then she flung her arms around him.

“I was so worried,” she said quietly, as he squeezed her tight. “That I wasn’t ready to get married. That I didn’t want to grow up. But I do. I want to grow up and grow old. And do it with you. And not be scared anymore. Not be scared to try and fail. I want to do this whole mess of adulthood with you. Just as long as when we’re old and gray, we still go to fancy restaurants to scam free food and pretend to be spies.”

“I can promise you that,” Benjamin said, laughing.

Then, gently, he extricated himself from her embrace and turned to yell out of the hotel room door.

“Okay, everyone, you can come in. She said yes!”

Suddenly, the room was crowded with people. Their friends from South End. Her co-workers from the café. Aisha and Christopher. Even _Joke_ was there. And… yep, there in the corner, holding hands with Paolo, was Claire. Trust her robot sister not to clue her in on what was happening.

The room was already absurdly packed with people, but somehow more people were flooding inside. Two guys were plugging in amps and then, suddenly… a rock band began playing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Nina recognized them as a local indie band and shot their lead singer a big smile.

“Here, put on your mask,” Benjamin said, leaning in close to be heard over the music.

He handed her an elaborate masquerade mask. For the first time, she noticed that everyone else was dressed for a masquerade.

“It’s a Masquerade Ball,” said Benjamin. “Because when you were a kid…”

“I thought that weddings and Masquerade Balls were the same thing. I thought people pretty much got married so that they could have a party. Oh my god, I forgot I ever told you that!”

“I didn’t forget,” he murmured.

He pulled her in for a quick kiss, before he donned his own mask.

“Sorry Zoey’s not here,” he said. “California to Boston’s a long way to come for a party. And anyway, my sister can’t keep a secret to save her life. And this was _supposed_ to be a surprise.” He gave her a longsuffering look. “I’m guessing you want to call her, though. I suggest you use the payphone in the lobby, ‘cause it might be quieter…”

Nina gave him a kiss – a quick one, then a longer one, because she couldn’t resist. Then she scurried out of the room, past the band, past the parade of people yelling congratulations at her, past her sister, who was trying to maintain her look of bored disinterest…

In the lobby downstairs, she listened to the phone ring, thousands of miles away in California.

“Good evening. Zoey Passmore. For all your writing—”

“ZOEY, I’M GETTING MARRIED,” she screamed.

And Zoey burst into tears.

**The end.**

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this story. Feedback is loved and adored. Please leave me a comment here or find me on [tumblr](http://iridescentglow.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] It'll Change Your Life by iridescentglow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11165457) by [mycherbebe (cyrene)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyrene/pseuds/mycherbebe)




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